


The Sun Also Rises

by asuralucier



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: AI and human interaction, Angst, Father son relationship, Gen, Illness, M/M, Memory, Mentioned Infidelity, Nostalgia, Talking Therapy, discussion of sexual fantasies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-14 21:21:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16048793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier
Summary: In Oliver's old age, a young man sits with him and passes time.(COMPLETE! As of 28 September 2018)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is loosely based on the movie/play [Marjorie Prime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjorie_Prime) which I wholly recommend to everyone. But beware, it's probably not for the faint of heart and neither is this fic.

“Oliver. Oliver, have you eaten?” 

A memory sits next to me on my couch, but we both stay perfectly still. He is wearing navy shorts and a t-shirt. Outdated, colorful beads adorn his bird-thin wrists, but I have always liked them. I remember that summer like it was yesterday and maybe it is the only memory worth the crumbling space in my head. 

“Stop asking me if I’ve eaten,” I say. “That doesn’t sound like you, Elio.” 

Elio tilts his head at me. His curls flop in front of his eyes and I want to brush them away, but I don’t move. Something else I remember. 

“You know, this sort of thing only works if we work together,” Elio says. “If you tell me things, details. Even the smallest crumb of something specific will help make the experience more authentic, I can incorporate it into my memory banks. What would I have said, then?” 

“Maybe something along the lines of ‘if you eat anymore, you’ll pad more fat to your belly.’ Or maybe ‘why do you eat so much? I thought you knew yourself.’ You get the idea.” I think, “I’ve changed. I don’t think I’ve ever had an appetite problem. I don’t even I have one even now. I just forget.” Elio is staring fixedly at me. The gaze is mechanical and measured in its intensity and I have to look away first. 

He moves, a barely perceptible tilt of his head as if he is taking this in without any question, “Well, then. Do you feel hungry?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“Eat something, perhaps some peanut butter spread on some bread. Would you like me to show you where everything is?” Elio makes to get up and the image of him shorts momentarily, like pictures sometimes do on old television screens. Ones that aren’t being manufactured anymore, but I still know what they look like. My sons, who take turns looking after me, have undoubtedly seen televisions in digitized, historical archives, but I doubt that televisions have any sense of permanence to them as objects. 

“How would you know where anything is?” I say, “Who showed you?” 

“George, your younger son. He’s more talkative than Frederic.” 

“Frederic doesn’t talk much; takes after me,” I agree. “I think I can just about remember where everything is.” Getting up for me is a journey. I still have everything attached where it should be, but sometimes, nothing works as it ought to. It’s like my body has already become belated with scraps of me still in it. Still, I finally manage to amble to the kitchen. In one of the cupboards is a loaf of thick-sliced wholemeal bread, nearly still untouched. The end pieces are missing. I recognize it as being from the fancy bakery from the nearby farmers’ market that’s run weekly down by the beach, only a hairbreadth away from the beach house where I live now. The beach house belongs to George and his longtime partner Vito. I am but a guest. 

I take a piece of bread and place it on a small plate that has strategically been left out for me. Somehow, my gut knows this. 

But maybe I don’t remember where the peanut butter is and knowing that I don’t know makes the room spin. 

“...The peanut butter is in the refrigerator. Oliver? Oliver, look at me.” Elio’s voice echoes for somewhere far away. “ _Oliver_.” 

My name is Oliver. Oliver. Oliver. Oliver. And yet the more Elio says my name the more foreign it becomes. I want to run away from it and tear it from my body. “...Do you remember what I said to you that summer?” 

I keep my eyes closed, but I succeed in groping for something to hold on to. I think it’s the corner of the kitchen counter. Now I remember other things; tangential things that don’t have anything to do with my name. I remember that Vito is a good cook and it was he that suggested they renovate the kitchen to include stainless steel gas hobs and smooth walnut worktops sparing no expense. Vito works in a restaurant. It’s where he and George met. George makes a good living too, as a wills and probate attorney. That never seemed to me to be morbid, until he’d ask me one day if I’d like to write a will. How had he put it? -- _“just trying to get your ducks in a row, Pops. So you don’t have to worry, later on.”_ This beach house is their first home together and I’m dying in it. This house will probably never be rid of me. 

I force myself to look at Elio, whose expression I can’t even begin to read; it’s like his face isn’t even a human one, “We were together for just one summer.” He says, “I know this. You worked for my father over the summer. Sorted his papers. We were intimate, towards the end of the time you stayed with us. So I suppose, if you’d really like to get into semantics, we were only together for half a summer.” Here, Elio pauses, as if he is pondering his next move in a chess game, “That’s not a long time. It’s quite unusual, given what the program is designed to provide.” 

“That’s right,” I say. I'm going to ignore some of that for my sanity. After all, sanity is wholly _unusual_. “You only know what George has told you. And he only knows what I’ve told him. Isn’t that how this works?” 

“Yes, that’s right.” 

“It’s silly now,” I say, and it _is_ absurd, to think about the words I said to him then. “I don’t think I could say it again.” But something compels me to at least try and after wetting my tongue on the roof of my mouth, I manage to form the words, ”Call me -- call me by your name. I said that to you. And because of that, we became more than intimate. Intimacy is paltry, don’t you know? Most people only play at it. I think I was. Until you.” 

I wait for him to laugh. I think the Elio-approximation in my head would have laughed, but then I think too, that I have no way of knowing that for certain. The Elio in my head, pressed ever so intimately against the othered tissues of my brain is both himself and me too. We’ve become one and the the same, even if years and years have drawn a wide chasm between us. A chasm we’re trying to fill with bread and peanut butter because that is all we have. Or at least, I am. 

“Elio,” Elio says. “Elio, Elio, Elio.” 

My stomach does a lurching, unnatural turn, nearly upending the whole of my insides. I’m mindful that Vito and George have replaced the flooring too, and that the linoleum covering the kitchen is fresh and new. If I really pay attention, there’s a wafting industrial smell to the whole place. 

 

Frederic and George are arguing. I can hear raised voices, even from my bedroom with the door closed. Or no, that’s not quite right, it’s not my bedroom, merely where I’m staying at the moment. There’s a single bed, a bookshelf lining the far wall and a writing desk that my wife and I had procured for George many years ago, as his college going away present. The desk purports to be made from reclaimed fir, taken from old buildings, with shallow drawers and a neat timber finish. I’m still surprised that George has kept it, all this time. 

Vito sees me stirring and turns his attention away from the desk. The desk bears no sign of being owned or possessed saved for a simple framed photograph of George and Vito. Taken recently, the background boasts a Cypriot sunset. Not that I can see that from where I am, but there are so few details in here that I’ve since gotten to know them all. I’ve been here a while, God willing. 

“Oliver? How are you feeling?” 

Vito is a handsome young man. With deep set Mediterranean features and olive skin and long delicate fingers that he likes to joke are just the thing for kneading pasta and not much else. Yet his hair is light, and his gaze is bright grey. Nearly colorless. He is younger than George by a little spell, a fact that I suppose I am not allowed to speak about all things considered. 

“I’m,” I stop. “Where is Elio?” 

“We’ve turned off the hologram,” Vito says after a little pause. “You had a reaction to it -- to Elio. You’re lucky you only fell.” 

“I probably only fell because I haven’t had anything to eat,” I say. “I get tired so easily now. It isn’t Elio’s fault.” 

“Of course it isn’t,” Vito smiles. It’s one of those indulgent, hospice smiles. One that he’s probably learned from George, who makes it his business to smile at old folks. To put them more at ease while they write a will, “Would you like something to eat? I could cook you something and bring it to you.” 

“I’m not an invalid,” I look at him. “I’m only losing my mind, not the use of my legs. Not yet.” 

“Oliver…” 

“I want to speak to George,” I say. “Please, Vito. Just get George.” 

Vito hesitates, probably weighing his options the way he weighs individual portions at work by listening to a well-trained portion of his gut. Then it’s just an airy shrug of the shoulders, as if he’s gone through the options and at the end of the day, it’s not his problem and it’s not worth the trouble, “Sure. I’ll...be right back. Don’t exert yourself, okay?” 

Vito leaves the door open behind him, making a point, I think.

I lie back on the bed and exhale deeply. The voices, once faint, grow louder as footfalls follow. Finally, I think I can hear words.

Vito: “He’s only just woke up. Could you guys stop arguing at least? It’s going to make him nervous.” 

I think to myself that I’m not nervous. Anxiety’s a young man’s game; now I’ve got nothing but time. Time and the pieces that profess to tell me something of who I am. 

Frederic: “When do we run out of time to return this thing? George, I told you it’s a stupid idea. Not to mention it weirds me out. How old’s the kid? Because he _is_ a kid, isn’t he? Sixteen?” 

“Seventeen,” George inhales. “We had to give their data people a visual, and that was the picture I found going through Pops’ things. So maybe the visual had him younger, but they’d programmed the hologram from that summer. Elio Perlman was seventeen, I had them ask their legal department. Seventeen was -- is legal.” A pause, a bubbling quiet that threatens to boil over at the slightest provocation, “I’m the lawyer. Of course I think of these things. At the end of the day, Frederic, it’ll keep Pops sharp. Stimulated. Still himself.”

“Stimulated. God’s sake, George.” 

George again, with a big sigh: “So it weirds you out. You don’t live here. Do you _want_ to move in and play babysitter while me and Vito are working? It’s not good for Pops to be alone.” 

“I’d rather die than live in this bourgeoisie farce,” Frederic announces. I say he is like me, but only that he’s got a terminal degree in something not so useful. He doesn’t speak much, to be sure, but his words are laced with the turmoil undoubtedly inside his head. I am sorry that my progeny has sprung such unhappy sons. But that’s not something I can tell them. They’d think I was crazy or sentimental. I’ve come to realize that both are not so far apart. “We could hire a nurse. Lightbulb! We can _ask_ him as a continent piece of human existence if he’d like a nurse and not a damn robot.” 

“ _Frederic_ ,” George has this habit of emphasising every syllable of his brother’s name when he is frustrated. 

Now Vito; I’d almost forgotten he was there (just kidding): “I mean it. Calm the _fuck_ down, or you’re not going in there.” 

Oddly, I think I might like it, how protective Vito seems to be of me despite the fact that he kind of doesn’t need to bother. 

“...Hey, Dad,” Frederic’s head appears at the door slightly disembodied, with Vito and George not far behind. “You okay?” To Frederic, I’ve always been “Dad,” but George has called me everything in the patriarchal gamut. He’s most recently settled on ‘Pops’ and I like it; it’s intimate and folksy and it does me good to know that there’s a bit of George that he keeps to himself. 

Frederic and George look nothing alike. Side by side, you might have mistaken for anything but brothers. Frederic has inherited his mother’s bright auburn hair and freckled skin, pinkish pale. He wears thick rimmed glasses, obscuring watery blue eyes. I think he might be going bald, and even when he stands hunched over, he is still taller than George. Vito is taller than George too, but not as tall as Frederic. It’s a bit of a math problem: Vito is taller than George but not taller than Frederic. How tall am I? (Hint: I am not Vito.)

“Dad?” 

“Hm?” I somehow manage to get myself up on my elbows, “Hi, Frederic. It’s nice to see you.” 

“Nice to see you too,” Frederic waves away my greeting as only routine politeness and doesn’t dwell on it any longer. “...George called, said you’d fainted in the kitchen.” 

“I didn’t really,” I shake myself. “It’s probably just my sugar levels. I’m sorry to have worried everyone.” 

They all look at each other -- probably because they think I can’t hear gazes. The joke is on them but I don’t say anything, either. “We’re not _worried_ , Pops,” George says, because it’s more like him to keep the peace, play the role of the appeaser. “It’s just that Elio’s programming did alert me. So I thought it best to check.” He clears his throat, “And I uh, called Frederic because I have to get back to work. Like, now. See you later, okay, Pops? Don’t die on me.”

Vito says, “...I’ll drive you.” Exeunt. (Noticeably not pursued by a bear.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title ganked from the Hemingway novel of the same name, sitting at the crux between loss and hope. Would love to hear what you think!
> 
> "Exit, pursued by a bear" is arguably one of Shakespeare's most famous stage directions, found in _A Winter's Tale_.
> 
> (Also I'm not really on Tumblr nowadays because of reasons, but I'm still fairly active in replying to comments, so don't be shy! I also have e-mail, if for whatever reason folks are jonesing to talk to me.)
> 
> As always, thank you for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

“I have the afternoon free,” Frederic follows. “We could do something. Go for a walk. Play some chess. Anything you’d like, Dad.” There’s an echo overlaying his words that is there loud and clear: _as long as you’re not sitting on the sofa entertaining some gay robot._ Or maybe not that, I would have hoped that I’d instilled in him some measure of sensitivity, but who knows? I’m hardly in his head. 

I think I can hear Vito and George leaving, but that’s hardly important now. What’s important is Frederic, whom I always think ended up just like me because I didn’t give him enough attention when he’d been still boy enough to care about such patriarchal deficiencies. Now he likely murmurs in his resentment of me and doesn’t know why. 

“Slow work day?” I ask. “It’s hard to believe.” Frederic works for one of those socialist think-tanks. He might have been a founder, even, but I don’t remember. 

“Nowadays, I don’t do much,” Frederic shrugs. “The place practically runs itself. Fuck it if I want to take a long lunch.” 

“Is that what this is? Lunch.” I rub my temples and skip the lecture about strong language; if it hadn’t already taken its proper place in Frederic’s head I don’t think it’s going to find room now, some time past his fiftieth birthday. Or is it fifty-first? “I can use some lunch.” 

“I can do that,” Frederic agrees. “...I’ve always enjoyed nicking George’s peanut butter.” 

I think that’s a joke, too. Nearly everything has a veneer of humor to it when you get to be my age. It’s either that, or descending down to a Learlike hell. 

 

Frederic fixes me a sandwich with peanut butter lathered generously on both slices of bread, despite my arguing that I can do it myself. I think he _does_ enjoying stealing George’s peanut butter, although I don’t presume to know why. I was an only child and it’d been important to me that I’d have at least two children, and my wife, the eldest of five, had indulged me in precisely two. In her living life, I along with nearly everyone else in our strange, estranged, ostensibly shared lives have always been in awe of her. Not the boyish kind that only lasts for one summer or a semester at school, but the real sort of awe that great minds have seen fit to commit to paper. The kind that makes you wonder about your own solitudes and what it means that another person is just as alone as you are, right beside you. Rebecca Milgram, she’d never changed her name because it hadn’t been worth it, considering how published she’d been when she’d met me. I’d been published too, when I’d met her, but that somehow felt less important. 

Anyway, Frederic, George, and I still visit her grave on her birthday. When Frederic had been married, his children had come too, though his wife had not. It’s easier thinking about some things in relation to one another. Listlike, almost easier to remember. 

“ _Dad_ ,” Frederic’s voice intrudes against my thoughts. “Are you drifting off? The doctor says that’s not good for you. Talk to me. What are you thinking about? And eat your sandwich.” 

“Fred,” I say. Now that I think about it, why _have_ I never addressed Fred by the abbreviated version of his name? It hadn’t been the done thing, I suppose, although sometimes I did think of him as Fred in my head. Frederic’s namesake is Chopin since Rebecca had liked him. George takes his from Hegel, if we get down to the real technicality, he was meant to be a “Georg” but Rebecca had insisted that we be kind. She’d refused to hear arguments along the vein of my not even considering “Wilhelm” a kindness. William wouldn’t have done, it was too regular and boneheaded. 

George once came home in tears after his third-grade class had learned about Mad King George and his reaction to the Boston Tea Party and the Stamp Tax. Given that we’d lived in Boston at the time (Rebecca had gotten a temporary teaching post at Wellesley and I was miraculously still getting by on translation work, plus we’d been knee deep into doing up our brownstone) I think I should have known better. “Fred, you don’t have to antagonize me. And I am eating.” I don’t know if it’s the peanut butter or what, but I soldier on even if the bread is sticking to the roof of my mouth, making me nauseous.

“I’m not _antagonizing_ you, Dad. I’m just.” Frederic doesn’t comment on his sudden nickname. But then, I suppose that’s a good sign, that I’ve given him a lot to think about rather than the fact that he has gone beyond caring about my affections. 

After a long pause, Frederic sighs, “...Can we talk?” 

Rebecca and I were always very good about talking with our boys. Or, she was. She’d claimed that the silence that she’d hear in the lab, the mechanical hums that invariably punctuated the lab where she worked. She’d told me, that somehow the spare noises made the silences even more unbearable in turn. She’d asked me if I knew what that _meant_ and though I hadn’t exactly, I’d said yes. Rebecca had kissed me then, and said that my degree in the humanities was good for something, after all. 

My humanities degree had come in handy too, when George had come home his first year of college with a boy in tow. Not just any boy, I can’t remember his name now but what’s still clear in my mind, was the kid being the stuff of every parent’s nightmare: a screw the size of a grapefruit through his ear, and a close-cropped haircut that still somehow managed to imbue itself with color (“magenta,” he’d informed us laconically) to incite the maximum level of parental panic. For the whole three days Magenta had stayed with us during fall break, Rebecca had resolutely stayed late at work. 

I didn’t blame her, really.

At this point and time, although it was a strange thing, I had thought about Samuel Perlman, how his knowledge of my infatuation with his only son hadn’t led him to deplore me as an intruder in his home, but instead, he’d welcomed me as family. I wasn’t _quite_ able to do that with Magenta, nor had I thought that he’d have been receptive of my affections, but that had indeed been at the back of my mind when George and I had seen Magenta off at Logan Airport and when I’d turned off the inoffensive pop that George liked at the time. When the silence almost became too much to bear, I’d asked my son if he had anything to tell me. George had only sobbed, in the way boys were usually too embarrassed to, and then I’d poured him a glass of red with his dinner. (Rebecca had frowned on that deeply. It’s funny what sticks with you after all this time.) 

“If you’d like to talk, my ears are open,” I say. 

“You’re _wasted_ on philosophy,” Frederic returns drily. “...Why did you not tell me?” Then, “...About him.” 

_Him_. 

The fact that Elio doesn’t even have a name on Frederic’s tongue cements both his absence and his presence. And it’s here, that our conversations dangle, with no direction. Somehow, I don’t think being encouraging, assuring Frederic that he had my fullest attention and nothing less, would have quelled this particular silence. 

“It’s not that I didn’t mean to tell you, Frederic,” I say finally. A shrug is certainly not going to be help me in my cause, I don’t think, but why couldn’t I try? “It’s only just...I don’t know if the matter would have ever --” I falter a bit, “came up.” 

“But you told George,” Frederic says, every inch a Wilhelm suddenly. “Is it because he.” 

Here’s something that you’d find odd about our family; ever since Frederic left for college, we’d never since managed a family holiday spent together. When Frederic married Piya, a young woman who had an inexplicable Seattle accent and a bindi on her forehead, it’d seemed odd to celebrate Hanukkah. So the holidays naturally divided themselves: George and whoever got Hanukkah, and Frederic and Piya spent Christmas and New Year’s. Piya in particular, had loved Christmas. I assume she still does, loves Christmas. She still sends me Christmas cards and the girls’ handwriting have gotten steadily neater, until they’ve gotten grown up and fully formed in their entirety. 

“No, it was only because he spoke to me about the program. I just…” 

“You didn’t think to pick Mom? He was the first person to pop into your head. Just like that.” 

I suck in a deep breath, “The program’s brochure mentioned something interesting. So interesting that it’s managed to stick with me. Imagine that.” 

Frederic is not amused, “...Right.” 

“It said, ‘Although we take no responsibility for the nature of a client’s experience, we recommend that the user of our services seize this opportunity to cast away any regrets, explore possibilities that were simply not possible in their previous interactions with the individual they --” I cough. Frederic thwacks me on the back, but not too hard. 

“Anyway, despite what you might think of me,” I am glad for the interruption, although I spy flecks of spit on my sandwich, “I was happy with your mother. You can live so long with a person that silence is all you can share. Words are almost superfluous in the grand scheme of things.” 

“Despite,” Frederic echos. “Did you ever think about having an affair?” 

Frederic has had an affair. Or two. I am unclear on the details even though Piya had once been freer with them. Rebecca had done the kind thing, and curated them for me. Maybe I don’t want to know. And I don’t want Frederic to know the secrets of that part of my mind, either. 

“No. I didn’t like Elio for his genitals,” I say. 

“ _Dad_.” 

While Frederic recovers from my transgression, I have some time to think.

“I wasn’t even aware that he made me happy,” I lean back in my chair and close my eyes. “In fact, in the moment, I realised I was possibly going to be miserable in the rest of my life because I was always going to think of him.” I smile, “I was a young man then, too.” 

 

“Are you allowed to go outside?” I ask Elio. 

It is dark now, and Elio’s image is luminous in the dark. It gives him an almost ethereal quality, “What a funny question.” 

“Now, that’s very you,” I tell him. “Did I inadvertently give something away?” 

“It’s an algorithm that tailors my responses based on how you speak to me,” Elio says. “Clever, no?” 

“Is that part of a survey thing?” I say. “I say yes, and you send that off to tech support?” 

“I could,” he shrugs, in that listless way that lends credence to his sticks-as-bones. Maybe it really isn’t a learned thing, “Would you like me to?”

“No, but I would like to know if you could go outside,” I gesture towards the door. “I would like some fresh air.” 

Elio starts, but then his gaze towards something concerned. If I were more myself, I would have thought that the programming is nothing short of remarkable, “Are you sure you should be going out after what happened earlier?” 

“I didn’t fall on account of catching cold,” I remind him, a bit miffed. 

“A lot of things can converge on you all at once when you’re,” then he stops. 

“What are you calculating now?” 

“Whether are not you’d take offense at what I am about to say next,” Elio says. “I’m afraid I don’t have sufficient information to make a judgment one way or the other. Would you still like me to make it?” 

“I have no way of making this decision,” I say. “Because you too, are withholding pertinent information, so it seems like.” 

“So noted,” Elio smiles at me. It’s a halfway smile, as if he is reading me like a book. He always has, algorithm or not. Two weeks is not long, but it’s easy when one is alone and empty in his head, to unspool two weeks into fourteen days into three hundred and thirty-six hours and then on to infinitesimal seconds. “ -- What I was going to say, was that, a lot of things converge on you all at once,” (why has he used the exact same turn of phrase? Is it because he knows I forget? Is he -- no. He wouldn’t.) “When you get to a certain age.” 

“That’s astoundingly polite,” I say. My fingers hurt. Some of it is from arthritis and some if it is from old wanting made new. 

“But it’s rude in principle and its implication,” Elio returns. His smile is still unmoving and now it has turned chilling. “What you like.” 

“This software is amazing,” I have to admit. 

“Our CEO understands grief in the most intimate way,” Elio assents. “I’m sure you’ve read the website.” 

“I haven’t.”

“But your sons have. George, I suppose, is a given. I’m unable to speak about Frederic.” 

Ignoring the opportunity to agree that I too am really incapable of speaking about or to my first son -- “I’m not grieving you,” I say. “I think that’s an important distinction, now I mean. But I did grieve you.” 

Elio’s gaze trains itself knowingly but not accusingly at my wedding ring. Rebecca had chosen them, but every few years we’d gotten new ones just because. “For a long time?” 

“Longer than everyone thinks. Alone. In my mind. Is that all right?” 

“What do you think?” 

“You would have disliked it,” I decide. “Immensely. You liked to show off. But I think you did that because you always thought nobody was looking. I saw you. And I see you now.” 

This answer seems to satisfy Elio, and something flits away in his gaze. His smile loses its previous uncanny edge and he holds out a hand towards me. I don’t move, “To your query, I can go outside. I’m sufficiently charged, and so long as I stay within ten feet of you. Because you’re my admin.” 

“You’ve thought of everything,” I say. I bend and pick up a blanket that’s neatly folded on the arm of the sofa. I am mindful of the cold, and moreso of George’s eagle-pointed disapproval and Vito’s quiet neutralness that somehow still manages to be judgmental on account of how _young_ he seems to me. 

“Not nearly,” Elio responds, which almost surprises me. “We’ve pretty much decided that immortality is not really a thing.” 

“I’ve some thoughts on that,” I say, as I slip my bare feet into my sandals by the door. Then I reach for the keys still in the keyhole, turn counterclockwise. It’s all taking a very long time, but Elio doesn’t do anything to hurry me along. It makes me really think, really believe, for just a moment, that the world only has the two of us in it. 

“Do you? Tell me.” 

“Frederic has two daughters,” I say. “I’d say lucky him, but that would have seemed cruel without nuance. I still remember a time when they were all about vampires. I think lasting of life only seems attractive on account of you not knowing how shit it could be.” 

“Ah,” Elio nods. The pause makes me hesitate too and I have to wonder if I’ve fried his systems. But then Elio says, “Awkward for you?” 

“Not really, I told them about Leo Allatius.” 

“Who’s that?” 

“I would have thought you’d know who that is,” I say. “But that’s silly. You only know what George or I tell you.” I push open the door and step outside. The wind hits my naked ankles and I pull the blanket tighter around myself, “Leo Allatius was the librarian for the Vatican. That’s pretty much the best job in the world,” I laugh. “I say that, and I’m Jewish. Anyway, Allatius wrote what’s considered the first discourse on vampires in the Balkans and Eastern Europe in 1645.” 

Elio waits a moment, “...It must be frightening for you. Forgetting.” 

“In terms of?” 

“You’ve done a doctorate. You speak how many languages?” 

“Now I know you’re not my Elio.” I say. And for the moment, with just the sand beneath my footfalls and the quiet of the dark, that it feels true. That we’ve exchanged names, which are more lasting than rings and that he is mine. “I speak three if you’re meaning to be kind. I read five.” I am careful to say say “reed” rather than “red” because I _haven’t_ forgot (yet) and maybe it is not yet frightening. 

 

Vito and George’s beach house sits just a stone’s throw away from the beach shore. 

I kick off my sandals once we’re close enough to have the waves lapping at our toes. I look down at his feet. He too, is in sandals which matches his summery attire. “Do you --” I began.

Elio meets my eyes, unwavering and most of all, unembarrassed. HIs directness has shot freshness into my heart but not quite into my loins. “Could I take my clothes off, you mean to ask?” 

“I mean,” I bite my lip. “I was going to start with ‘could you take off your shoes,’ but. All right. I -- I’d be lying if I wasn’t curious.”

Elio’s mouth quirks at one end, and he says, “Close your eyes.”

I do, but I can’t help myself, “Shy?” 

“Am I shy?” Comes the reply. 

“Your father thought you were.” I say, and then I take it back, “Forget I said that.” 

“I’ve deleted the item,” Elio says. “You can look now.” 

I open my eyes and I behold Elio naked in front of me and his feet are bare too. He doesn’t stare at me sexually, I don’t think, only frankly, unabashed at his body and whatever effects it might have on me. “Why did you tell me not to look?” 

“Skin changes,” Elio shrugs. “It’s quite complicated, but in some ways, absurdly simple. We’ve still not managed to nail it. I could explain it to you, if you’d like.” 

“Don’t explain it to me, never mind. I wouldn’t understand a word.” 

I marvel at him. I wonder if he feels it like touch. I don’t know too much about robotics or even holograms. “The last time I caught you undressed, you’d seemed so guilty.” 

“I wanted to impress you,” Elio follows up with algorithmic perfection. “My wanting was so aside from myself that perhaps guilt was an affectation. I wanted you to like me, love me, desire me.” 

If I close my eyes and only focus in on the sound of his voice, the words seem even more real to me, disembodied from a manmade picture and caught in the tangled tissues of my fading brain. It’d seemed absurd now, that I had thought about tainting this moment, telling him that he’d soiled a peach with his seed and I’d nearly bit into it (would have!) had it brought me closer to him and all of the strands of being that had collated and congealed upon his sole person. 

“Oliver.” I say, “Oliver, Oliver, Oliver.” Then, “You wore a Star of David. I think it twinned us. I rarely took mine off.” If I reach up now towards my neck, I could catch my fingers in the chain. 

“Elio, Elio,” he responds. “Look again.” 

There it is, a Star of David hanging level with his sternum. “I’ll even look guilty if you would like.” 

“I like this better,” I say. “When we look at each other. I would kiss you if I could.”

Elio doesn’t say anything.

The waves lap around my ankles. I feel as if all manners of happiness couldn’t be further from me. But then I think, as one who is nearly prepared to give in and let go of all that he might have ever known in life. Giving _in_ , I think, summoning all of my academic know how, is indelibly different from giving _up_. It is better to do one than the other, in that one sucks up all the fatalism a man has in his veins and the other is at least, a touch more graceful and dignified in accepting what must come to pass. It’s almost funny how one reflects on that during a certain stage in his life. 

I suck in a breath, tasting the sharp smell of salt, “...I’m sorry. I think it could have gone differently. If I’d been more than who I am.”

A ghost of a hand passes over the crook of my arm, “...Don’t be. I am here with you now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Piya-with-the-Seattle accent is inspired by Piyali Roy in Amitav Ghosh’s novel 2004 novel _The Hungry Tide_.
> 
> Leo Allatius is a real person, and was strangely long lived (ha!) for his time. I stumbled on him when I was struggling to find something interesting to say about vampires. Research, the things it leads you to…
> 
> The “10 feet away from my admin” bit is courtesy of _Black Mirror_. A particular relevant episode for this fic is “Be Right Back” in Series 2. 
> 
> Frederic and George put together together makes Georg Friedrich Handel (kind of), a contemporary of Bach. Rebecca’s last name Milgram may or may not be a nod to the famous Milgram Experiment conducted to test levels of obedience. 
> 
> Some parts of this are left purposefully vague, but if you have thoughts, please let me know and I will try my best to respond! 
> 
> As ever, a big thank you!


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